


Waking Dreams

by MrProphet



Category: The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 03:45:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10689105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	Waking Dreams

It was an experimental treatment for night terrors; a drug that blocked the parts of the brain responsible for the releasing key neurochemicals. To its creators, it was a simple medicine; a product of science to combat a chance of biology; they could never have imagined the impact it would have on a world that science did not apprehend.

But dreams, and nightmares, do not arise from the brain; they simply find a place there. With that denied to them, the nightmares had to go somewhere else.

The first went unnoticed, a momentary lapse in concentration by a taxi driver. It was months into widespread trials of the drug that things started to be noticed. Outbreaks of panic, confusion; unprovoked and frenzied assaults on people the attackers saw as monsters.

The nightmares were enjoying their time in the sun.

If the effect had hit the trial subjects, it would no doubt have been written off as a reaction, but the subjects were the only people not affected. Their altered brain chemistry wouldn't let the nightmares in. No-one could explain the outbreaks, and the proximity of a drug trial patient was never noticed.

The outbreak ended after the doctors involved in the development and trial of the drug were hit by an unprecedented epidemic of sleeping sickness. The nightmares went away and none of them ever woke again.


End file.
